Loretta Lynn has lived a life extraordinary even by the standards of other country music icons. The second of eight children and brought up in a one-room Kentucky cabin she ate possum as a child and was married at aged 13.
Her life changed forever in 1960 when the, then 25-year old, had a Nashville hit with “Honky Tonk Girl”. She’s since become a C&W icon – a Matriarch with five kids and twenty-one grandchildren who presides over the Loretta Lynn Dude Ranch complete with its own museum and motocross racetrack.
Her voice remains as pure as the proverbial mountain stream. Honey-toned and tinged with regret it’s a truly wonderful thing unaffected by the years. Mr Jack White certainly thinks so – he claims “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, Lynn’s Sissy Spacek-starring biopic, was the catalyst for him to pick up a guitar in the first place. He even left Lynn a written dedication on the White Stripes own “White Blood Cells”.
Here he takes the production chair and puts a sympathetic band of rock musicians behind his heroine allowing her voice free reign to travel. Surprisingly, the results are as close to Loretta’s world as Jack’s – “Portland Oregon” is an exquisite duet where the smitten twosome sound like they’re waltzing around the studio, while the title track, despite a musical similarity to “Coward Of The County”, would have good ol’ boys tapping their boots in time.
Only “Have Mercy” comes anywhere near rocking out, though it does so in the style of Sun Records circa 1954. Elsewhere fiddles, steel guitars and dobros dominate.
It’s not as remarkable a transformation as the one Rick Rubin performed on Johnny Cash, but this is a fine collection and as pleasurable a listen as it undoubtedly was to record.
